Cruise safety in IMO sights

The newly elected International Maritime Organiation (IMO) secretary general Koji Sekimizu is planning a fresh initiative on passenger safety following the Costa Concordia tragedy.

Sekimizu says that although under maritime international law, the incident could be handled entirely by the Italians under Italian law, he feels passengership safety should be tackled at a global level through the IMO.

IMO secretary general, Koji Sekimizu.

“The Costa Concordia accident happened in Italy, it is an Italian ship with an Italian master sailing under the Italian flag. This could be handled under Italian law but among the passengers there were 70 other nationalities involved and the cruise business is an international activity.”

He said he expects to set up a new agenda for discussing passengership safety at the upcoming Maritime Safety Council (MSC) meeting scheduled for May.

He added that at the MSC meeting member states may decide to tackle the safety of large passengerships.

“The new agenda may trigger a safety evaluation of large passenger vessels but I don’t want to pre-empt what the IMO will decide,” he said.

Sources say influential governments at the IMO such as European Union (EU) member states and the US are currently assessing their policy on passengership safety in light of disaster that claimed the 114,000-gt Costa Concordia (built 2006) and are likely to be influential on the direction of the initiative.

As reported earlier in TradeWinds, Italian representatives at the IMO had promised to come up with an accident report in time for the May meeting. Sekimizu said there is a possibility that only the preliminary report may be ready rather than the full final version but he still urged the Italians to submit it. He said the Italians had agreed to allow IMO staff to monitor the ongoing accident investigation so that the organisation could act quickly on any safety concerns that emerged.

He added that it was important that any findings were acted upon, pointing out that he had already pressed the major cruise lines to reassess their safety procedures.

The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) recently announced that its members would conduct a Cruise Industry Operational Safety Review.

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